With some trepidation, I pass along this grenade from Alex Tsakumis re NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton’s planned fundraising dinner.

As you’ll notice, if you can get beyond Alex’s wimpy interview style (joke, Alex), there are some nuggets of information here about the state of the NPA. This whole thing reminds me that the NPA has not held a major fundraiser since the election, which speaks volumes.

I remember that even after the NPA almost got wiped out in 2002, surviving councillors Peter Ladner and Sam Sullivan hosted a relatively successful dinner for the NPA faithful by about this time. It showed the party still had a few hundred followers willing to write cheques and that there was definitely life in the old beast.

(Sorry I forget to actually provide the link earlier on today — thanks as always to Bill Lee for providing invaluable back-up)

I’m not a big events lister, but two things that those of you who frequent this blog might be interested in, which I’ve been asked to post:

1.Car Free Day creator, sometime SFU prof and author Matt Hern has written a book of essays called Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defence of an Urban Future. To go along with that, he’s been putting on conversation nights with various local people quoted in his book. There’s one Saturday night and one Sunday night. Although it’s advertised that I’ll be at the Saturday event, it turned out that I can’t be. But many other interesting speakers will be and I’ve heard from others that the evenings are packed and lots of fun, this being the city where people loooove to talk about urbanism.

Here are the times and places.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 30th, 7:00 pm
Riddim and Spice (1945 Commercial Dr. – at 3rd)
What is a great city? Should Vancouver even be trying to be one? What would a great city look like here?
-with-Frances Bula, Erick Villagomez, Gord Price, Carm Mills, Dustin Rivers and Matt Hern

SUNDAY, JANUARY 31st, 1:00 pm
The Purple Thistle Centre
(975 Vernon Dr. – at Parker)
A great city has to be an ecological city. What should urban agriculture look like here? What does ‘food security’ really mean? Can a real city feed itself – should it even try? Does ‘greening’ the city undermine its social vitality?
-with-David Tracey, Conrad Schmidt, Cease Wyss and Matt Hern and co-sponsored by COPE’s Freedom of Speech Series.

2. The local chapter of Architecture for Humanity (I didn’t know there was one, so nice to hear from them) is holding a film screening/fundraiser for Haiti next Saturday, Feb. 6, which you can link to here:

http://afh-vancouver.org/main/?p=772

It was so busy yesterday that I had to bail on going to council to hear the decisions on these two issues. I’ll be catching up. Although there’s been lots of coverage of this in other media, I have a feeling there are some subtleties here that aren’t being caught. Back to you later.

We media types had a field day yesterday, phoning up everyone in the world with any kind of public position who might be guilty of accepting free Olympics tickets. Here’s the Globe’s take on it, which I helped out with.

I can hardly wait until we start printing the lists of business people getting free tickets. Have you noticed how many of the tickets are being used to schmooze business types? Apparently Vancouver is going to put out a list after the Games with the names of every person who got a free ticket. Should be fun reading.

Oh, everyone was going gaga today over the city’s protocol guide (or as they spell it in their doc header, protocal guide — meaning first (proto) and heat (cal), I guess), as though we would all be fined by the TransLink police if we didn’t follow the rules.

Of course, it’s the kind of thing that’s distributed all the time at international events, intended for those who have to deal with the deputy emperor of Limpopo or the viscount of Lilliput and the like. I append the city link here for those of you who feel you may be called upon to interact with people of this caliber.

But while I think it’s much fuss about nothing, here’s a game for all of us: How about if we make up rules for real and likely interactions between Vancouverites and visitors? Like: When passing a joint to an international visitor who is not familiar with the open use of illegal drugs in Vancouver, the proper etiquette is to ask if the visitor would prefer to smoke in a more private place than the BC Place opening ceremonies.

Or?

 Go to it.

Vancouver has been tussling with the issue of condos in its downtown business district for a while.

There’s still a debate going on between the planning department, which is trying to preserve a strong core of office-only space and a substantial inventory of office space throughout the downtown peninsula, and developers, who have developed a lot of expertise in building condos and say that Vancouver’s office market just won’t support a lot of office-only buidlings. So they’re pushing for the right to have more office/tower combos.

Vancouver is not the only city with that issue, though it creates more angst here among those who fear we’re turning into a resort city with no real business base. Others are dealing with it, including, yes, Toronto. I have a story in the Globe’s Property Report section today that looks at the specific question of buildings that mix condos and offices in downtown districts.

A big splash yesterday as Gastown developer Jon Stovell and ITC Construction announced the arrival of micro-lofts to the city, at 270 square feet and renting for an average of $725. My story in the Globe is here, though it’s only the beginning of the saga.

I’m curious to know whether this could happen with other Downtown Eastside hotels that can’t get the permission or won’t pay the fee to demolish or convert, but want to upscale a little. Would the city also allow them to create micro-lofts? I talked to Wendy Pedersen from the Carnegie Community Action Project after my deadline yesterday and she said there are three other hotels sitting empty, the way the Burns Block (Stovell’s project) was before he took it over and decided to do the micro-lofts.

You’ll notice in my story that no new developments would be allowed to build condos of this size — only existing buildings that are being renovated. And presumably only existing buildings that had small rooms already. I can’t imagine the city would allow a developer to take a regular apartment building with 50 units and make them all smaller to squish in 75.

Lots of thorny questions here to consider.

In the ongoing debate on whether the Olympics is going to wreck or save our province, I offer this latest news release:

MEDIA RELEASE |  JANUARY 25, 2010
No evidence of a post-Olympics boom or bust for host city real estate prices: UBC study

Cities that win Olympic bids experience neither boom nor bust in their real estate prices, but gain construction jobs as they prepare for the Games, according to researchers at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

The UBC study is the first to use real estate variables to test the Games’ economic impact on host cities. Sauder School of Business researchers analyzed house prices and construction employment in the years leading up to and after the Olympics in Australian, Canadian and U.S. cities.

“We do not find support for the argument of host city backers that the Olympics delivers positive economic benefits, nor of the arguments made by opponents that there is some post-Olympic bust,” says Tsur Somerville, lead author and Sauder’s Real Estate Foundation of B.C. Professor in Real Estate Finance. The study’s co-author is Sauder PhD student Jake Wetzel, a three-time Olympian and 2008 gold medalist as a member of the eight-man rowing team during the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

“Our results conclusively demonstrate that while construction employment dramatically increases in the period prior to the Games, house prices are the same as they would be in the absence of the Games,” says Somerville.

“While findings suggest no economic gains,” Wetzel says, “the Games still present a very real opportunity to celebrate excellence, athleticism and human achievement. The societal impact of valuing the Olympic ideals goes far beyond economics and politics. Hosting the Games ultimately reflects pride in our athletes, city and country.”

Somerville and Wetzel analyzed whether the rate of growth in house prices and construction employment is higher in an Olympic city than a non-Olympic one at the time of the announcement of the awarding of the Games. They also looked at the data during subsequent years leading up to the Games or for a six-year period afterwards.

The study includes the Summer Olympics cities of Atlanta (1996), Los Angeles (1984) and Sydney (2000), and Winter Olympic cities of Calgary (1988), Salt Lake City (2002) and Vancouver (2010). In total, the researchers analyzed quarterly data sets for 300 metropolitan areas in the U.S., nine major cities in Canada and eight state capitals in Australia.

Findings show that pre-Game construction employment grew by 1.7 per cent in Sydney, 4.3 per cent in Vancouver and 3.9 per cent in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

Yikes. The email that can really wreck your day or life went out yesterday at city hall. I’m just digesting this, but will post it for now. Welcome your comments. I do note here that it appears that the city has managed to avoid about half of the planned layoffs.

From:    COV Broadcast Server    Sent:           Thu 1/21/2010 5:32 PM
To:     All Staff (COV) – DL
Cc:
Subject:        CoV Broadcast: ALL STAFF EMAIL
Attachments:
View As Web Page

ALL STAFF EMAIL
January 21, 2010
On December 18, 2009, Council approved the proposed 2010 budget. In that budget, staff recommended three ways to meet our budget shortfall:

o A combination of revenue increases
o Strategic implementation of Vancouver Services Review (VSR) programs which will provide some savings
o A number of service level adjustments

In our December 1, 2009 report to Council, we estimated that approximately 167 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) in the organization would be impacted by these strategies with approximately 109 FTEs coming from service adjustments and 58 associated with VSR strategies.  At that time, we committed to communicating those impacts to staff as soon as possible, and today I can give you more information.

STAFF IMPACTED BY THE VSR
The VSR is currently in the early stages of implementing some of the Council approved projects and at this time there are no VSR related position impacts.

STAFF IMPACTED BY SERVICE ADJUSTMENTS
Our goal has always been to have as few people as possible leave our organization by finding alternative positions within the City for impacted staff.  In December, we estimated 109 positions would be impacted through service adjustments.  Since we tabled the budget, Engineering has identified an additional 12 positions due to a decreased work load in Equipment Services.  This brings the total number of positions potentially impacted by service adjustments to approximately 120.

The service adjustments identified in the budget for three areas — the Bloedel Conservatory, Children’s Farmyard and the Graphics department — are currently on hold at this time as there is more work to be done related to Council and Board direction to pursue opportunities for alternate sources of funding and/or partnerships.  The number of FTEs potentially impacted at a future date is approximately 10.

Our Vacancy Management Committee, composed of a number of senior level leaders from across the organization, has been working in partnership with managers to identify further opportunities for potential placements of impacted staff.  Through this work, we have been able to reduce the total number of impacted staff from approximately 120 to less than half that number.  We hope that we can further minimize the impact in the following months.

Today, 44 staff will be receiving 60 day notification that their position with the City is being eliminated as a result of service adjustments.  This is not a layoff notice under the Collective Agreement; rather it is Section 64 notice under the Employment Standards Act.  Section 64 requires 60 day notice when there are 50 or more employees in one location being terminated.

While the number of employees being impacted at any one location is much lower than 50, we feel the 60 days gives impacted staff and managers additional time to consider and evaluate other opportunities within the organization.

To be clear, our goal is to have as few people leave the organization as possible, and we will work with the Vacancy Management Committee, managers and Unions to find new opportunities that may arise for any impacted employees. We will continue to communicate regularly with you as the different phases of this work unfold.

Communicating this kind of news at any time is not easy, and some people will question why we are doing this so close to the Olympics. We have discussed this at length and it is clear that uncertainty is one of the most demoralizing aspects to changes like this.  Given that we communicated the likelihood of staff impacts in December, many employees have been working in a state of uncertainty since then.  We felt strongly that we needed to provide the information regarding job impact as soon as our analysis was complete.

We have informed the Unions who have impacted members of this decision, and we are working closely with them to make sure that our actions honour our statutory and Collective Agreement obligations.

While the number of impacted staff at this time is much smaller than was expected, we will continue to strive over the next few months to reduce it even more. What I can tell you is that we are going to support our employees through this time.  Our HR transition team will work with impacted employees, their managers and the Human Resource Consultants to ensure our employees receive the support and guidance they need.

I know all of you will support your colleagues impacted by these challenges.  We have attached a document with FAQs and if you have any further questions please, reach out to your manager or Human Resources Consultant. For managers with staff who do not have access to email please print off this document and post it in your common areas.

Penny Ballem

There’s been a lot of concern in my neighbourhood over the planned social-housing project at the corner of Broadway and Fraser, just the latest of what seems like an ongoing series of neighbourhood unhappiness over density, towers, or social housing.

Cheryl Rossi at the Courier has done a story here on what the active neighbourhood group has to say. This is the first of the social housing projects coming to ground outside the Downtown Eastside, so it will be interesting to see how this conversation evolves. It will for sure give everyone an idea of what the conversation might be like for the project at 16th and Dunbar.

It’s easy sometimes for planners and housing groups to write off all opposition as just ignorant NIMBYism. And there is some of that going around in this neighbourhood, for sure. But that’s not the end of the story.

[Read more →]